


conventional cures

by scvlly



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, MSR, post-IWTB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6113619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scvlly/pseuds/scvlly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to ask her about her day. To take her in his arms and make sure she’s okay. To numb whatever it is she’s feeling with human warmth and not the false buzz of a depressant drug.</p><p>But it all belongs to another time, to another man and another woman with another life and another end to their story, and Mulder thinks he’s never felt something so truly alien that it makes him physically shudder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	conventional cures

They sit on the unremarkable kitchen floor of their unremarkable house; his legs outstretched beside her crossed ones as they lean their backs on the cupboard doors of opposing countertops. His feet sit a little sideways, the left slightly resting against her thigh, though their eyes don’t meet. There’s no sound other than the almost silence of their breathing, of their screaming past, of their hesitant future.    

There’s been no sound since Scully’s car drew up thirty-three minutes ago and her door slammed shut and she walked up those few steps to his _(their)_ porch and through his _(their)_ front door.   

Since she found him on the sofa somewhere between sleep and wakefulness; bathed in the aroma of stale air and something faintly illegal.  
Since, her shoes kicked off, she brushed past him to the drinks cabinet and took out half a bottle of something Scottish and twenty years old.   

Since she took it and herself to the kitchen, and he followed. 

 

She sat, and so did he. Her hooded eyes had stayed fixed on the bottle she held between her open thighs as his studied her face. She looked tired, with unbrushed hair falling an inch or so below her collarbones above a faded jumper he thought once might have been his, and a pair of leggings clinging to her legs in the same way he used to.   

_(He remembered waking innumerable times in a cold sweat to see her leaning over him with soft eyes, her hand cupping his jaw and her thumb smoothing his cheekbone to bring him from his nightmare, and then she would hold him; hold him until he made a pillow from the valley between her thighs and stomach and wrapped himself around her and slept.)_

Mulder’s gaze settled on a splatter of blood on her neck. His heart had made clear its concern before he realised the spray pattern meant it wasn’t her own, and his relief had faded to another worry: her surgery can’t have gone well if she’s neglected to wash it off or fix her hair; if it's brought her here to him and his drink and his kitchen floor.   

She had crossed her legs at this point, closing him off from the bottle and pulling him from his dazed deductions; he’d relaxed back into the cupboard and his toes had fallen to rest on her thigh, and she hadn’t so much as flinched.

 

And that’s how they’ve come to be here, on the floor, in the damp darkness of a Thursday night in mid-January, without having said a word.   

Scully unscrews the bottle cap, and the metallic scraping feels to much of an intrusion of something deeply personal to be a pleasant end to their stretching minutes of quiet. She takes a deep drink straight from the bottle and despite its unquestionable strength and potency, doesn’t seem to notice that she’s just downed at least a fifth of what was left.

  The cap remains discarded on her knee as she pushes the drink towards him.

He tears his eyes from the long lines of her throat as she swallows and directs them towards the bottle; to her hand as she takes it away and places it back in her lap. The bottle has moved as far as her arm can reach without any movement from her upper body, which is about a third of the distance from their single point of contact and the place where his back is slumped against the cupboard. He reaches for it, takes a small drink, and sets it back where she put it.

He wants to ask her about her day. To take her in his arms and make sure she’s okay. To numb whatever it is she’s feeling with human warmth and not the false buzz of a depressant drug.

But it all belongs to another time, to another man and another woman with another life and another end to their story, and Mulder thinks he’s never felt something so unequivocally _alien_ that it makes him physically shudder.

Scully doesn’t notice. She moves for the bottle and takes another sip; smaller this time, but not unsubstantial. It’s followed by another, then another, and finally Mulder reaches out to bridge the distance between them and still her drinking with his hand over hers on the bottle. She doesn’t pull away, but concedes the vessel to him.

Her hands are cold. 

Mulder sits back, and drinks.

 

He’s been watching her all night but she’s not looked at him above the wrist or ankle. She's barely noticed him, Mulder thinks, but they both know it'd be entirely different without him there.

_(What wouldn't have been different without him there?)_

The bottle has continued its passage as a sort of neutral territory between them; keeping them both at the negotiation table with little to discuss but equally little desire to leave.

 

It’s almost all gone, his twenty-year-old preserve, but Mulder doesn’t feel drunk in the slightest. And yet there’s no miraculous clarity in his mind; no grand sweeping gesture playing out across the questionably-coloured tiles; only a dark numbness threatening to overwhelm him. 

He thinks it will when Scully moves her hands to her sides to push herself up from the floor, but falters unsteadily as her arms take her upper body weight. Mulder’s foot moves, apparently of its own accord, to rest on her hand in an attempt to encourage her to stay on the floor. She sits back heavily, patting her pocket in search of her car keys.

  “You can’t drive after that,” he tells her in a voice so calm that his inner turmoil finds itself surprised into stillness, and she finally looks across at him. It’s her first response all night, and he’s so relieved that she’s finally reacted to something, anything.   

_(Him.)_

   Her eyes are cold and unblinking and startlingly present, but he knows deserves their impassivity. Her still-full lips are tight and her eyebrow lies deliberately flat. He tells himself that he hasn’t seen this look before, that it’s the drink; the hour; the circumstances.

   In truth, it’s shatteringly familiar.

He also knows what follows.

 

She stands, pushing herself up with her palms on her knees. If he’d not spent the past hour and a half here with her, Mulder would never have guessed how much she’s had to drink.

He’s filled with a dark sort of pride, but it soon disperses as she drops the bottle cap at his feet and walks from the kitchen. She momentarily disappears into the lounge to collect her shoes, and then she’s back, moving with a soberingly _Scully_ gait down the hallway towards the front door.

She doesn’t look behind her, even as she closes it.

 

Mulder’s eyes fall closed. He waits for the car to start; for the crunch of gravel; for the silence that follows. 

He doesn’t know why he waits. 

He knows it always ends this way.

 

He thinks about her hand and the absence of her rings; about her finger without so much as a strip of pale skin showing the tanned permanence of their promises to one another.

 

He drinks. 


End file.
